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Going back four months before I joined Steemit, I had never blogged about anything at all. So as you might expect when I first joined I had no clue what I was doing (not that I really know now… just more than I did then)! If you look back at some of my earliest blogs, my inexperience is very apparent, nobody paid attention to them, and I’m not even a little bit upset about it. My early blogs just weren’t any good. I did a lot of observing since those days and I think I have come a long way. I would like to take this opportunity to write about what I have learned about blogging about scientific topics and science writing in general. I hope if you are having struggles with your own blogs (or even if you are wildly successful) that you too can take away a little bit from my experiences and advice.

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Citations

Referenced Materials

I imagine this isn’t where you would have expected me to begin, but it is very important to know, especially to those who are new to scientific writing. Science is built, brick by brick, on the backs of the work of others. We all stand on the shoulders of the giants of science who came before us, and when you use someone else’s material for reference it’s important to attribute where you have gotten the information you are discussing from. In many other areas this may not be as strictly demanded…which could be because there is a lot more creativity and ability to add your own interpretation to material. However when you blog about science you are usually discussing facts, and it’s hard to put your own spin on facts. Unless you are an expert in the field you are blogging about you likely have to look things up to keep all of the facts and information straight. Provide credit to where you looked things up. The easiest way to do this is to site things right along with the text. I include links to material used (Citation) like that, with a direct citation to the material in an easily accessible fashion. If you are citing a book you can always cite to a reference section at the end of your blog like this [1]. Even if you don’t care about the work people in the past have done…at the very least, by citing you are providing your readers with the opportunity to look more into the topic that you are discussing.

Images

On Steemit, the use of images that require a license could lead to a lot of legal troubles for the platform. Since we all want to see the value of our accounts grow, and for rewards to continue one of the easiest way to ensure this can continue is to always, always, always provide a citation to any material you used. Our fellow steemians working to keep plagiarism at bay (@steemcleaners) spend a lot of time looking for inappropriately cited images and plagiarized content. We can each do our part to make their job keeping Steemit clean, as easy as possible by citing all images we use (even open licensed ones). It really doesn’t take too long to add a quick (Citation), I do this even for Wikipedia images because someone worked hard to make that image and I want to give credit where it is due.

Titles and Clearly Defined Sections and Dividing Lines

One thing I have found over the past for months is just how difficult it is to keep peoples attentions with one large wall of text. Like I mentioned before, writing about science usually involves a bunch of facts. Let’s face it, facts can get really boring, especially when they are presented in one giant blurb of text. Nobody wants to read that! So divide your material up. Paragraphs aren’t enough you need to have

Headings

and

sub headings.

This does two things: 1.) it gives your reader some extra direction as to what is going to be discussed and 2.) it forces you to write more specifically about the topic in the heading. Another great tool at your disposal is to add a physical line to the text to divide things up, it gives the reader a visual que that things are going to be changing. You can do this by adding <-hr> to your text (remove the – and it will make a horizontal line like this:

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Images Really Help Tie Concepts Together

(Source)
Above is the example of an image that doesn’t help at all, I don’t think a white tiger photo shopped jumping out of some water into outer space really does anything to help tie this story together. However a good image can! When you are talking about heavy, complicated scientific topics you can make them a lot more understandable with a relevant image to go along with the concept you are discussing. Give people something to visualize as they think about your topic. Many people have very different learning styles, and the more ways to think about something you can give someone, the easier it will be for them to digest.

There are Many Groups Forming Specifically to Help You with Your Blogs

The final and most useful thing I have learned is many of us are in the same boat together! We are all novice bloggers! As a result many fantastic groups have formed to help people write better, more effective blogs (that will hopefully get bigger, more impressive rewards!!). If you aren’t using steemit.chat I highly recommend you sign up and visit the group #steemprentice they are a group of steemians who just want to mentor bloggers and pass on the things they have figured out. They don’t charge anything for their help, they just want to give back to the community and help make Steemit a great platform for everyone. The #steemprentice folks even offer a variety of ready to use templates that you can place text and images/citations into and use to post. These templates will give your posting a sleek look that might just get you more readers and upvotes!

If you are looking to talk about the science in one of your future posts, I am a member of a growing group of people who want to do the same thing for the science content of your posting. That room is called #steemSTEM and everyone in there would be happy to discuss the science of your future posts with you, and help you make sure your content is informative and factual. Many of the people in the #steemSTEM are experts in their respective fields and there is quite a diverse set of knowledge to learn from!

Conclusions

In four months on Steemit I have learned a lot, and by looking at my blogs I think it shows in the quality of the blog posts I produce. I still have a lot to learn, but I also know there is a great group of supportive people out there who are always willing to give me constructive advice on how to make my work look better, sound better and generally be the best it can be. I hope that from reading this post you have taken at least one thing away that may help you make a positive change to your own postings!

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# References

1. Citation directed to [1] would go here

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If you like my work, please consider giving me a follow: steemit.com/@justtryme90. I am a PhD holding biochemist with a love for science. My future science blog posts will cover a range of topics in the biology/chemistry fields.

Thank you for your support of my work!